I'm still skeptical on the DE bringing people together.
Granted they might fight together, but if my years of MMO tell me anything this is generally how i feel it will go
You are warned of a problem in town
You run to the town and see it under attack.
You see 3 other people fightin in that town
You kill the monster, and continue until you complete the event.
Then everyone (if your lucky) thanks each other for the help, then run their seperate ways.
Not much of a group effort and certainly no more interaction then in normal circumstances. all it does is remove the group aspect. Which just makes it feel more solo/single player then a group would.
DE in my opinion do not support group play and will most likely have little interaction with each other. Least thats what i've seen from my experiences.
It's always been if i can solo it, i will. if i don't have to talk to others, i won't. This has been the case in nearly every mmo i've seen and i'm pretty sure it will be the same thing here. The instance dungeons will promote group play, which is nice but I don't see the DE promoting any sort of group play. Just everyone doing their thing to win the event.
Dynamic events are replacing standard quests in MMO's. In those standard MMO's it goes a little something like this:
You have a quest and you head to the quest area for completion at which point you:
A) Are pissed that people are killing the mobs you need for your quest to collect x of y
Are pissed that the guy you are supposed to escort is off with someone else and you need to wait for it to reset.
C) Are pissed because all the mobs you need to kill are gone and you have to wait for them to respawn
D) Run into somone in the quest area and actually have a quest that it would be beneficial to do together and chat with the person only to find out they are on a different step in the quest and you can't work together. Then you're pissed for wasting your time.
E)Run into someone in the area on the same quest step of a quest that benefits from grouping and your best case scenario is you work together to get it done then thank each other and part ways.
As much as you might have doubt about how well the DE's might help grouping at least you will always be happy to see other players and you can do things like initiate cross class combo skills. Also I think the downed state revive system will help get players working together and thanking each other.
I know you're a bit SWTOR fan (Hey I'm hoping it will be out this spring to pass the time until GW2 comes out) but what will it do that will better promote grouping? SWTOR Grouping:
I'm going to spend the next 200 hours playing this like a solo game so no one messes with my dialogue choices or complains that I actually want to pay attention to the lore. See you at end game when I need a trinity. Until then just me and my companion.
TLDR: Unless a game actually FORCES grouping the best thing you can do to encourage it is what GW2 has done (can't grief or pvp, can't mob steal or loot steal, don't split reward for grouping, easy system to revive any player, cross class combo skills.
You guys are looking at this wrong. The Dynamic Events are NOT going to support grouping. GW2 is ANTI-GROUP. That's the whole point. The only time you'll ever need a group for anything is for those dungeons, which are supposed to be particularly challenging as compared to the rest of the game.
It's not about grouping in GW2, it's about ~community~. Those Events aren't going to promote grouping because rewards are split evenly between all players, because you don't need to be in the group to heal/ressurect someone, because you don't need to be in a group to participate. This is a ~good~ thing. It means you can help purely because you want to, and know you'lll still get a reward. There's nothing stopping you from helping that small group of adventurers during a dynamic event! You could be the 6th person coming in and you're still just as helpful, and just as rewarded, as that group of 5 people (which is the max allowed in a group). In any other game, you could have to sit on the sidelines until more people showed up because their group was full, and hope that the next people that come along have room for you. I don't understand how people consider that the fun way. *shrug*
GW2 is about bringing people together and getting rid of that retarded dynamic of static groups. It's meant to eliminate cliques and remove the concern over whether or not you get a group, while still promoting working together towards a common goal. That, to me, is a step forward.
Reading that it doesn't sound half bad. I do wonder if maybe I am stuck in the past when it comes to wanting groups but I enjoy them. At the end of the day it is about community for me and that is sadly lacking in many games. If this is the way things are headed then GW2 needs to do a much better job of bringing on community interraction than Rift does. It sounds backward but I think the ability for players to heal themselves actually will help this. You're taking away the need for players to interact in some ways but giving players more power to trust each other. You don't have to rely on Player A for a heal, you can just stand by his side and fight.
I did like how you said that dungeons are said to be very challenging, but they said that about Rift and then I entered Realm of the Fae. I hope they can bring back the era of Guk. Make dungeons feel immense and let you get lost.
Since EQ in 1999, I have always enjoyed playing with other people without having to group with them. I wish NCSoft wasn't involved, I'd love to try this game, but I will not give NCSoft another frakking dime.
Since EQ in 1999, I have always enjoyed playing with other people without having to group with them. I wish NCSoft wasn't involved, I'd love to try this game, but I will not give NCSoft another frakking dime.
I feel the same way about Cryptic. However in the case of a game like GW2 you really will be doing yourself a disservice and I bet you'll change your mind. If it makes you feel any better I've had nothing but good experiences with Anet in GW1 and reactivating my account after a long break was a breeze.
I could see if Anet burned you then you wouldn't want to play another of their titles, but NCSoft is just the publisher. That's like saying you won't play SWTOR because you got burned in some EA titles.
I don't know exactly what burned you, and frankly I don't care. However, think carefully about painting Anet under the NCsoft brush.
Since EQ in 1999, I have always enjoyed playing with other people without having to group with them. I wish NCSoft wasn't involved, I'd love to try this game, but I will not give NCSoft another frakking dime.
NCSoft is not involved in the design or development of GW2. They're simply there to publish and distribute. ArenaNet is purely handling the development of this game without interference.
Since EQ in 1999, I have always enjoyed playing with other people without having to group with them. I wish NCSoft wasn't involved, I'd love to try this game, but I will not give NCSoft another frakking dime.
I feel your pain there. I truly do. I know most of the GW1 community has never played an actual NCSoft game. Most are just ANet fans. Not NCSoft fans. That should speak for itself. I hope you give it a try. You might enjoy yourself. All NCSoft does is give ANet the resources to build the game that ANet wants to build. I believe NCSoft knows not to get in the way. Especially after how well the GW Campaigns did along with Eye of the North. Hope you change your mind buddy.
There are two important aspects of GW2 which encourage socialization.
First is that Dynamic Events chain into other events. They aren't like WAR's public quests or Rifts where you defeat it and you're done and you go your separate ways, they chain into another event. If you defend the village from the centaurs, then everybody has an incentive to see it through and attack the centaur camp in the next event. And so on and so on. These chains can be up to 20 steps long. The developers have said that in their experience, you get these bands of 5-10 players who start going from event to event and start communicating with each other over time. Even the ones who in other games would just want to solo find themselves interacting with others just because there's no reason not to.
Other people are never a bad thing. You never have to worry if someone is going to KS you, or start an escort quest before you, or steal your node. People also get rewarded for ressurecting other people. Everybody gets the same experience and gold/karma rewards. Difficulty scales on the number of people. The whole system is build from the ground up to encourage cooperation and community.
Also there are cross profession combos. The elementalist creating a fire wall for a ranger to shoot through. The poison cloud that necromancer minions get stronger attacks by standing in. These are designed to be very visual. You see it and instinctively know how you can alter your play for maximum effectiveness. These things keep the events from just being a zerg.
That and the events can be designed to just not be a zerg. Like in the shatterer, defending the artillery. Or players are rewarded for putting out fires. Or just rezzing people.
I am very much looking forward to this system.
As far as dungeon NPCs go, to my knowledge, dungeons have a story mode and then later an explorable mode. In the storyline, you'll be doing a dungeon with a member of Destiny's Edge who will be an uncontrollable NPC that will follow you around. Once you go back to do the dungeon in the explorable mode, the NPC won't be there and you'll do it in a regular 5 msn group.
"Gamers will no longer buy the argument that every MMO requires a subscription fee to offset server and bandwidth costs. It's not true you know it, and they know it."-Jeff Strain, co-founder of ArenaNet, 2007
I second Cali59's post. You will be definitely be grouping in PvP and it really is up to you wether or not you and your buddies want to play together. I think this is good because back in Guild Wars 1 it was either waiting to find a group or bring hero/ henchies.
Now even in GW1 they are making emabark reach and letting you use 7 heroes in a party(which is awesome and bad at the same time). I think with that update it will be less sociable.
At least in Guild Wars 2 you can solo or simply party up with people that are in your area. There are some who like to PvE alone and will probably scorn you for helping to attack that monster but he/she will recieve the same random loot drop /exp nevertheless.
Guildwars 2 will be more zerg than any game out there accept for Darkfall.
The anti-social soloers will be out in mass numbers thinking they are in Guildwars 1 and get anger ball on you if you attack something they are attacking.
I can totally see this happening on mass scale in Guildwars 2. The game might go down as the biggest solo MMO to date due to the crowd that is hungering for it.
1 question, can we still invite a friend into a party and been in a group all day during all the event that mix with other people ? me and my friend are group play i mean we play together and follow each other and try to be same lvl has each other,
so its cool the fact that u dont need any group to max lvl and everything but can we actualy party and and anywhere he is i can see him in my map?
~The only opinion that matters is your own.Everything else is just advice,~
Originally posted by sk8chalif 1 question, can we still invite a friend into a party and been in a group all day during all the event that mix with other people ? me and my friend are group play i mean we play together and follow each other and try to be same lvl has each other, so its cool the fact that u dont need any group to max lvl and everything but can we actualy party and and anywhere he is i can see him in my map?
Yes and you can even take your friend in to your personal storyline, they don't have to be played solo, your friend can then take you in to their storyline too.
Looking outside DE's and looking at the normal course of MMO activities: It's not uncommon to be travelling through dangerous territory alone, any chance of help is going to be appreciated should you suddenly find you accidently aggroed that group of mobs behind that wall while kiting another. Once people have got in to the concept that helping isn't punished in any way by denying xp and loot then people are going to be much more likely to help. With a few souls coming together while traversing an area there may be no reason to group but the opportunity becomes greater to do so. In most MMO's you see someone in trouble and you have to decide to be selfless to help as it usually means no reward except a thanks (reward enough in my book) but in GW2 it's always to your advantage.
Guildwars 2 will be more zerg than any game out there accept for Darkfall.
The anti-social soloers will be out in mass numbers thinking they are in Guildwars 1 and get anger ball on you if you attack something they are attacking.
I can totally see this happening on mass scale in Guildwars 2. The game might go down as the biggest solo MMO to date due to the crowd that is hungering for it.
My two cents.
You're really thinking about this the wrong way.
As long as you are near another player in the world you are essentially grouped as far as the game's systems function. Soloers will find themselves playing alongside other players in 'groups' without ever even thinking about it. One of the entire points of the dynamic events system is that dissolves the wall that separates grouping and soloing; you WILL be playing alongside other players, and there will be no reason to be unhappy about it since you lose nothing from being assisted by another player.
This is the very thing that has me so interested in the game: ArenaNet's design philosophy seems extremely revolutionary as they are finally thinking outside the box and resolving the conflicts within gaming communities between players with differing playstyles. Outside of instanced dungeons soloing and grouping are the same thing!
Guildwars 2 will be more zerg than any game out there accept for Darkfall.
The anti-social soloers will be out in mass numbers thinking they are in Guildwars 1 and get anger ball on you if you attack something they are attacking.
I can totally see this happening on mass scale in Guildwars 2. The game might go down as the biggest solo MMO to date due to the crowd that is hungering for it.
My two cents.
To me a zerg is mindless just jumping on the nearest enemy with no tactics. (always helps to define what you're talking about so you don't realize 10 posts from now you're arguing about different things)
I think that there's a couple reasons why I don't think GW2 will be a zergfest.
The first is the cross profession combos. Even ungrouped players can take advantage of them. As long as that ranger next to you doesn't completely ignore the fire wall that buffs him, you're using basic tactics instead of zerging.
Second, we don't know exactly how the events will scale. One might think that if one player has to kill one enemy that two players might have to kill two enemies. But maybe it ramps up, like 2 players need to kill 3 enemies because even if they're not grouped the developers are going to expect people to focus fire and use cross profession combos. I don't think it will be a strong ramp up in difficulty (enabling griefing by participating but being terrible at it, lol), but it might require more than just everybody soloing next to one another.
Third, I think that there's going to be some difficulty to the encounters just based on that anybody can rez anybody at any time. The demo difficulty was toned down, and I've heard that the tail spin knockback that the broodmother does really hurt and almost one-shot people. If you've got 10-15 people fighting this thing and it slaps 5 people dead, you're no longer just piling it on in a mindless zerg. People need to figure out on the fly how they're going to stay alive and who else is going to try to revive the fallen.
Fourth, I think that a lot of the events have more going on than just killing X. If the goal is to prevent bandits from torching hay bales, or to protect the named NPC at the middle of the fortress, you can be great at mindless killing but still fail the event if you're not paying attention.
Will there be events you can complete just by zerging them, of course, especially if people mentor down and are comparatively strong. I just don't think it will define the whole game.
"Gamers will no longer buy the argument that every MMO requires a subscription fee to offset server and bandwidth costs. It's not true you know it, and they know it."-Jeff Strain, co-founder of ArenaNet, 2007
Comments
Dynamic events are replacing standard quests in MMO's. In those standard MMO's it goes a little something like this:
You have a quest and you head to the quest area for completion at which point you:
A) Are pissed that people are killing the mobs you need for your quest to collect x of y
C) Are pissed because all the mobs you need to kill are gone and you have to wait for them to respawn
D) Run into somone in the quest area and actually have a quest that it would be beneficial to do together and chat with the person only to find out they are on a different step in the quest and you can't work together. Then you're pissed for wasting your time.
E)Run into someone in the area on the same quest step of a quest that benefits from grouping and your best case scenario is you work together to get it done then thank each other and part ways.
As much as you might have doubt about how well the DE's might help grouping at least you will always be happy to see other players and you can do things like initiate cross class combo skills. Also I think the downed state revive system will help get players working together and thanking each other.
I know you're a bit SWTOR fan (Hey I'm hoping it will be out this spring to pass the time until GW2 comes out) but what will it do that will better promote grouping? SWTOR Grouping:
I'm going to spend the next 200 hours playing this like a solo game so no one messes with my dialogue choices or complains that I actually want to pay attention to the lore. See you at end game when I need a trinity. Until then just me and my companion.
TLDR: Unless a game actually FORCES grouping the best thing you can do to encourage it is what GW2 has done (can't grief or pvp, can't mob steal or loot steal, don't split reward for grouping, easy system to revive any player, cross class combo skills.
Reading that it doesn't sound half bad. I do wonder if maybe I am stuck in the past when it comes to wanting groups but I enjoy them. At the end of the day it is about community for me and that is sadly lacking in many games. If this is the way things are headed then GW2 needs to do a much better job of bringing on community interraction than Rift does. It sounds backward but I think the ability for players to heal themselves actually will help this. You're taking away the need for players to interact in some ways but giving players more power to trust each other. You don't have to rely on Player A for a heal, you can just stand by his side and fight.
I did like how you said that dungeons are said to be very challenging, but they said that about Rift and then I entered Realm of the Fae. I hope they can bring back the era of Guk. Make dungeons feel immense and let you get lost.
Nice post gaeanprayer, thanks.
.
Since EQ in 1999, I have always enjoyed playing with other people without having to group with them. I wish NCSoft wasn't involved, I'd love to try this game, but I will not give NCSoft another frakking dime.
Take the Magic: The Gathering 'What Color Are You?' Quiz.
I feel the same way about Cryptic. However in the case of a game like GW2 you really will be doing yourself a disservice and I bet you'll change your mind. If it makes you feel any better I've had nothing but good experiences with Anet in GW1 and reactivating my account after a long break was a breeze.
I could see if Anet burned you then you wouldn't want to play another of their titles, but NCSoft is just the publisher. That's like saying you won't play SWTOR because you got burned in some EA titles.
I don't know exactly what burned you, and frankly I don't care. However, think carefully about painting Anet under the NCsoft brush.
NCSoft is not involved in the design or development of GW2. They're simply there to publish and distribute. ArenaNet is purely handling the development of this game without interference.
Oderint, dum metuant.
I feel your pain there. I truly do. I know most of the GW1 community has never played an actual NCSoft game. Most are just ANet fans. Not NCSoft fans. That should speak for itself. I hope you give it a try. You might enjoy yourself. All NCSoft does is give ANet the resources to build the game that ANet wants to build. I believe NCSoft knows not to get in the way. Especially after how well the GW Campaigns did along with Eye of the North. Hope you change your mind buddy.
There are two important aspects of GW2 which encourage socialization.
First is that Dynamic Events chain into other events. They aren't like WAR's public quests or Rifts where you defeat it and you're done and you go your separate ways, they chain into another event. If you defend the village from the centaurs, then everybody has an incentive to see it through and attack the centaur camp in the next event. And so on and so on. These chains can be up to 20 steps long. The developers have said that in their experience, you get these bands of 5-10 players who start going from event to event and start communicating with each other over time. Even the ones who in other games would just want to solo find themselves interacting with others just because there's no reason not to.
Other people are never a bad thing. You never have to worry if someone is going to KS you, or start an escort quest before you, or steal your node. People also get rewarded for ressurecting other people. Everybody gets the same experience and gold/karma rewards. Difficulty scales on the number of people. The whole system is build from the ground up to encourage cooperation and community.
Also there are cross profession combos. The elementalist creating a fire wall for a ranger to shoot through. The poison cloud that necromancer minions get stronger attacks by standing in. These are designed to be very visual. You see it and instinctively know how you can alter your play for maximum effectiveness. These things keep the events from just being a zerg.
That and the events can be designed to just not be a zerg. Like in the shatterer, defending the artillery. Or players are rewarded for putting out fires. Or just rezzing people.
I am very much looking forward to this system.
As far as dungeon NPCs go, to my knowledge, dungeons have a story mode and then later an explorable mode. In the storyline, you'll be doing a dungeon with a member of Destiny's Edge who will be an uncontrollable NPC that will follow you around. Once you go back to do the dungeon in the explorable mode, the NPC won't be there and you'll do it in a regular 5 msn group.
"Gamers will no longer buy the argument that every MMO requires a subscription fee to offset server and bandwidth costs. It's not true you know it, and they know it." -Jeff Strain, co-founder of ArenaNet, 2007
I second Cali59's post. You will be definitely be grouping in PvP and it really is up to you wether or not you and your buddies want to play together. I think this is good because back in Guild Wars 1 it was either waiting to find a group or bring hero/ henchies.
Now even in GW1 they are making emabark reach and letting you use 7 heroes in a party(which is awesome and bad at the same time). I think with that update it will be less sociable.
At least in Guild Wars 2 you can solo or simply party up with people that are in your area. There are some who like to PvE alone and will probably scorn you for helping to attack that monster but he/she will recieve the same random loot drop /exp nevertheless.
-I am here to perform logic
Guildwars 2 will be more zerg than any game out there accept for Darkfall.
The anti-social soloers will be out in mass numbers thinking they are in Guildwars 1 and get anger ball on you if you attack something they are attacking.
I can totally see this happening on mass scale in Guildwars 2. The game might go down as the biggest solo MMO to date due to the crowd that is hungering for it.
My two cents.
1 question, can we still invite a friend into a party and been in a group all day during all the event that mix with other people ? me and my friend are group play i mean we play together and follow each other and try to be same lvl has each other,
so its cool the fact that u dont need any group to max lvl and everything but can we actualy party and and anywhere he is i can see him in my map?
~The only opinion that matters is your own.Everything else is just advice,~
Yes and you can even take your friend in to your personal storyline, they don't have to be played solo, your friend can then take you in to their storyline too.
Looking outside DE's and looking at the normal course of MMO activities: It's not uncommon to be travelling through dangerous territory alone, any chance of help is going to be appreciated should you suddenly find you accidently aggroed that group of mobs behind that wall while kiting another. Once people have got in to the concept that helping isn't punished in any way by denying xp and loot then people are going to be much more likely to help. With a few souls coming together while traversing an area there may be no reason to group but the opportunity becomes greater to do so. In most MMO's you see someone in trouble and you have to decide to be selfless to help as it usually means no reward except a thanks (reward enough in my book) but in GW2 it's always to your advantage.
You're really thinking about this the wrong way.
As long as you are near another player in the world you are essentially grouped as far as the game's systems function. Soloers will find themselves playing alongside other players in 'groups' without ever even thinking about it. One of the entire points of the dynamic events system is that dissolves the wall that separates grouping and soloing; you WILL be playing alongside other players, and there will be no reason to be unhappy about it since you lose nothing from being assisted by another player.
This is the very thing that has me so interested in the game: ArenaNet's design philosophy seems extremely revolutionary as they are finally thinking outside the box and resolving the conflicts within gaming communities between players with differing playstyles. Outside of instanced dungeons soloing and grouping are the same thing!
To me a zerg is mindless just jumping on the nearest enemy with no tactics. (always helps to define what you're talking about so you don't realize 10 posts from now you're arguing about different things)
I think that there's a couple reasons why I don't think GW2 will be a zergfest.
The first is the cross profession combos. Even ungrouped players can take advantage of them. As long as that ranger next to you doesn't completely ignore the fire wall that buffs him, you're using basic tactics instead of zerging.
Second, we don't know exactly how the events will scale. One might think that if one player has to kill one enemy that two players might have to kill two enemies. But maybe it ramps up, like 2 players need to kill 3 enemies because even if they're not grouped the developers are going to expect people to focus fire and use cross profession combos. I don't think it will be a strong ramp up in difficulty (enabling griefing by participating but being terrible at it, lol), but it might require more than just everybody soloing next to one another.
Third, I think that there's going to be some difficulty to the encounters just based on that anybody can rez anybody at any time. The demo difficulty was toned down, and I've heard that the tail spin knockback that the broodmother does really hurt and almost one-shot people. If you've got 10-15 people fighting this thing and it slaps 5 people dead, you're no longer just piling it on in a mindless zerg. People need to figure out on the fly how they're going to stay alive and who else is going to try to revive the fallen.
Fourth, I think that a lot of the events have more going on than just killing X. If the goal is to prevent bandits from torching hay bales, or to protect the named NPC at the middle of the fortress, you can be great at mindless killing but still fail the event if you're not paying attention.
Will there be events you can complete just by zerging them, of course, especially if people mentor down and are comparatively strong. I just don't think it will define the whole game.
"Gamers will no longer buy the argument that every MMO requires a subscription fee to offset server and bandwidth costs. It's not true you know it, and they know it." -Jeff Strain, co-founder of ArenaNet, 2007